Zorea leaned over the map, moving the view closer so that she could look clearly at Jillin.

“There was something in the Sigils you crafted that made me think of this,” she said. “The other ones, the ones you’ve not explored yet—one of them was called a Combination Sigil. It made me think that perhaps I could combine my magic with yours, Saul.”

“I think that might work,” Saul said, “though I had not considered using that spell in that way.”

“You’ve not explained what the combination spells do at all, Saul!” Brand said, a little grumpily. “Zorea seems to have worked it out for herself, but I can’t say I have.”

“Well, it’s like this,” Saul said. “I came to understand how the magic worked while I was crafting the Sigil—that strange trance state I went into while I was working allowed me to see not only what I needed to do to create the Sigil, but also how it would work once the spell was active.”

Brand was looking at him with keen interest.

“So, it works this way,” Saul said. “I can use different spells from my list, combining one of the spells with a Combination from one of the Schools of Magic. So, I can create, for example, a Rock Troll with a School of Fire combination, or a Fireball spell with an Air combination. At the current level, I can’t combine two specific spells—I couldn’t make, say, a Mud Golem combined with Whirlwind, but I can add a specific School element to any of the individual spells.”

“Right,” Zorea said, “but in Squad, can we combine our separate magics, do you think?”

“What do you mean?” Saul asked.

“Simply this,” Zorea answered. “Can we combine my feeling for magic with your map to locate the source of the curse magic?”

“But how?” Brand asked. “Your magic sense never appears as a System option, and surely Saul can only do combinations with the magic that appears in his System?”

“I don’t think that’s necessarily the case,” she said, smiling. “Remember when we made the portal Sigil, Saul, and you had to use a bit of your own personal magic to get it finished? That personal magic is not something that appears in your System, that’s something that you have regardless, as is my sense of magic in the vicinity. And yet, you were able to use it in combination with the System magic of the Workshop. I think we should be able to do it. Come on, let’s try it.”

Working on instinct, Saul and Zorea crouched over the map. Saul got the Combination magic ready.

He was presented with the list of his spells and felt that the System was asking him to pick one. Instead of doing so, he directed the Combination magic at the map.

The System resisted slightly, then yielded, and Saul felt the map slip into the first slot for the start of the combination spell.

Then he looked again at the spell list. He was presented with the five options of the five schools of magic, and a sixth, unexpected one: Builder.

That was interesting. Builder was the class under which his Earthshift spell sat, the one he had used to such good effect in digging the defensive trenches around Harkin’s Holdfast in the runup to the siege.

The possibilities of mixing other spells with a Builder combination was very promising, but he put that aside for the moment. He reached past the combinations offered and found Zorea.

For the first time he felt her own true, active magic, the magic that allowed her to have such a clean, clear, present sense of spells being worked in the area around her.

It was Old World magic, something she had gained from an older time. A time where magic was different, and was more tied to the senses and the individual than to some external set of rules and parameters. Zorea’s sense of spellcasting was an older, and somehow a purer thing.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

He found the spell that she was doing, caught it, and added it to the combination, then cast the magic.

“Woah!” Brand cried, as the spell took effect.

The map deactivated, vanished, then reappeared changed. Currents of golden light flowed all over its surface, concentrating in different areas into bright spots and trailing only thinly over others.

“A map of magic,” Zorea said with satisfaction. “It worked. Come on, let’s get a closer look at Jillin.”

The map had reset itself to the wide view of all the territory that had been explored, and now they brought their view closer to their current location.

There was, as one would expect, a powerful concentration of magic power around where they currently stood. But, as they moved their view over Jillin, the magic that was visible on the map changed from bright golden light to something darker and altogether more sinister.

The lines of magic woven around Jillin reminded Saul of the barbed stems of thorn bushes. They were black rather than gold, the wet, blue-black of corrupted flesh. They wound in and out of the streets of Jillin, round the buildings, and even through the people who moved around in the village and could be seen at this close magnification.

“There’s your curse,” Brand said. “You were right, Zorea, there’s no doubt about it. The curse runs through the whole village. But where is it coming from?”

“Raise the view a bit,” Saul said. “Let’s pull out from the village and have a look at the surrounding area.”

Zorea did as he asked, and they found out where the thorny lines of cursed magic were coming from.

“The pool in the woods to the northwest of the village,” Saul said.

Zorea nodded. “I felt something in that woodland when we were there before, but I was too focused on the lack of game in the woods to pay attention to the feeling. There’s something in those woods, something or someone that’s working to maintain the curse that’s holding Jillin village in sway.”

“But we can’t know what it is until we go there,” Brand pointed out, “and perhaps when we get there and find out the nature of the creature, or monster, or whatever it is, we won’t be able to enchant Zorea’s sword with the right spell.”

“That’s a really good point, Brand,” Saul said. “In fact, we’d be mad to head in without testing out how the enchantment works. How do you fancy an enchanted sword yourself?”

Brand laughed. “Let’s do it!” he said, and pulled his sword from its sheath. “Fire magic for me, I think.”

Brand held out the sword, and Saul summoned the spell. In a moment, he was presented with the five different schools.

He could enchant Brand’s blade with any one of them. He cast the Fire enchantment, and instantly, Brand’s sword glowed with heat.

“Cool!” Brand exclaimed, waving the sword about in the air, with trails of fire flowing out from around the blade.

Saul looked at Zorea. “The enchanting process is quick. We can enchant your sword on the spot, once we’ve discovered more about the nature of the enemy we’re dealing with.”

“Sounds good,” Zorea said, eyeing the blade. “I think we’ll be able to do it and break the curse.”

Next, they took the opportunity to have a look at the other Unique Sigil Saul had crafted, the Specialism Sigil.

“This is Squad magic,” Saul said. “When I was crafting the Sigil, I saw how it functioned. It gives us the opportunity to coalesce all our power into one particular field of magic. So, for example, we can choose to Specialize in fire spells, and doing so will bind us together into a more powerful Squad. It will allow us to combine our spells, I think, and it will give us all a boost of power when we’re specializing. At the level we’re at, I think we only have the option to choose fire specialization.”

“That sounds useful!” Brand said, “but the magic always seems to have a limitation. What’s the limitation on this one? What’s the downside?”

“Well spotted, Brand,” Saul said with a smile. “The downside is that if we’re specializing in a particular School of Magic, we can’t use spells from any of the others, and we’re not able to choose a different specialization once we’ve started. We have to win the encounter and get out of combat before we can choose to change.”

“Wow!” Brand exclaimed. “Sounds like it will be useful, but we’ll need to choose carefully.”

“Yes,” Saul agreed. “Different enemies will always have different strengths and weaknesses, and so specializing might give us the boost of power we need to defeat a strong enemy and win a difficult encounter. But we’ll need to be tactical, because there are definitely going to be times when it will be more valuable to be generalists with less power than specialists with more.”

“And don’t forget that even now, you have a long way to go. You’ve passed level 20, but there’s a lot of magic in front of you still to be unlocked, and many enemies to be fought.”

“Well said. In the Workshop, I’ve unlocked the five basic Schools of Magic, but there are two advanced schools still to be unlocked—Water and Metal—and many smaller leaves to reveal on the Spell Tree. We have a long road, but we’re on our way now, and the saving of the city of Jillin is the next step.”